I've noticed a movement with newspapers and other media sites to go one farther with a pop-up overlay begging for subscription where I have to hunt for the close button.
I’d imagine you’d start with the newspaper as it was 20 years ago: newsprint with some black text on it. Then you’d overlay some opaque paper over that with some text in it that said, “give us your address or phone number so we can contact you for breaking news”. Instead of a close button it would be something that people would have to tear off each page of the paper.
That’s not all though. Each paper would come with an actual person who would sit behind you and quietly take meticulous notes on which articles you read and how you reacted to them. That person would quietly leave with the notes, take it back to HQ, and tabulate which articles people engaged with the most. Over time the content with the lowest engagement would be trimmed and those journalists fired.
This is the world we live in today.
They want $5 for some magazines now and there are so many ads at the beginning that you can’t find the fucking table of contents to locate the cover articles that grabbed your eye.
That’s pretty close to what pop ups do.
First off, people who give out their email easily would typically do so on plenty of other sites and your subsequent upselling emails are likely to get lost in an inbox flooded by spam.
Second, I'd argue that people who have the most disposable income or influence on purchasing decisions made by their company are also those whose time is limited and are too smart to fall for such tricks, so the majority of leads you do end up with would be worthless.
It means converting from a free user to a paid subscriber
> I am not sure if this actually happens
un/fortunately it happens quite a bit